Many are incredulous that the market hasn’t plummeted despite President Trump’s missteps. “The stock market is best understood not as a presidential poll but as a barometer of the nation’s current economic mood, and it remains buoyant now for reasons unconnected to the White House.”

“Critics are accusing President Trump’s 2018 budget of ‘gutting the safety net’ with cuts to food stamps and disability insurance. In reality, the White House is proposing long-needed reforms that would fix a dysfunctional disability system that traps Americans in dependency.”

“Merkel has positioned herself more clearly than ever before as Europe’s defender in the face of the Trump challenge — a role that her SPD challenger Martin Schulz had been hoping to play. The SPD can do little more than agree with the chancellor. On Monday, Schulz tweeted ‘the best response to Donald Trump is a strong Europe’ — which is essentially exactly what Merkel said.”

“Earth is poorly named. The ocean covers almost three-quarters of the planet.” While “the ocean sustains humanity. Humanity treats it with contempt.” One sign of this contempt is that “scientists expect almost all corals to be gone by 2050,” a time when “the ocean could contain more plastic than fish by weight.” Our very survival now hinges on successfully answering the question, “How to improve the health of the ocean?”

“A few weeks ago Donald Trump set a record that I assumed was unassailable; Theresa May has since sailed past it with ease. The leaders of the US and the UK have become so proficient at changing direction that ‘U-turn’ no longer seems adequate. Donald and Theresa are spinning policy doughnuts.”

“China will not support using more sanctions to further pressure North Korea into halting its nuclear weapons programme.” Amid North Korea’s “continuous testing of ballistic missiles,” China’s reluctance “is setting up a clash with US President Donald Trump over economic issues that the US cannot win.”

Fee pressures are clearly being felt in the European fund market. Amid the rush to cap fees, “nearly 80 per cent of fund managers subsidise funds’ expenses, 19 per cent of the recorded subsidies also exceeds funds management fees.”

Quants may be able to “fundamentally transform the ability of investors to find companies that embrace ESG principles.” Beyond crunching more widely available ESG data, some hope that unstructured data, ranging “from people’s comments on social media to data mined from online retailers,” can reveal “hard-to-measure issues like corporate culture or a commitment to the environment.”

“How much of a problem is it that the president of the United States, the most powerful person on Earth, is a blithering idiot?” Depends what kind of blithering idiot. “Raw intellect doesn’t translate to presidential success, and its absence could, in the right circumstance, be compensated for.” But “President Trump’s particular brand of stupidity” is very dangerous. “You can be dumb but modest, or dumb but thoughtful, or dumb but careful. Trump is none of those things. He’s boastful, impulsive, and careless, all while continuing to blaze new trails of thickheadedness, while the rest of us are left to stand back and gawp in amazement.”

“Investors dumped Brazil’s stocks and currency Thursday as the country’s ever-proliferating corruption scandal spread to President Michel Temer. This latest twist in a seemingly endless saga not only threatens to stall vital economic reforms but also comes close to showing that the corruption in Brazil’s government is literally beyond control.”